


Love Letters

by ladymelodrama



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 7x04, Deleted Scene, F/M, Love Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29008908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymelodrama/pseuds/ladymelodrama
Summary: A deleted scene from 7x04.
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 20
Kudos: 44





	Love Letters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salzrand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salzrand/gifts).



> All this talk about love letters lately reminded me that I've had this little deleted scene hanging around for a few months and I should probably post it before I forget. Originally written as a birthday present (months ago 😂) for salzrand ❤️
> 
> You can read it as totally canon-compliant (can't convince me otherwise) and/or a lost chapter of _Jamais T'oublier_ 💞

Daenerys is livid when she returns to her private chambers. She locks her door behind her, the hem of her wool-trimmed skirt twirling around her ankles in her haste. 

She’ll refuse to receive anyone this evening. She’ll not take her dinner with the others. The crushing news from Highgarden and the empty victory achieved at Casterly Rock have come too close together, and she’s shaken by it, in a way that she doesn’t want the others to see—not Tyrion or Varys, not Jon Snow, not even Missandei—she wants to be alone. 

She needs to be alone. Where she can try and stop the avalanche of her crumbling dreams and ambitions from falling in on her and burying her beneath their weight. She seeks bedrock, something solid to hold onto. 

But there’s little bedrock to be found in Westeros. None at all so far. And she finds herself gritting her teeth and wringing her hands all the way up the spiraled stairs. Behind her locked door, she resists the sudden urge to scream and tear at her hair. Or cry a deluge of tears in frustration. Or rush to the nearest window, call out to Drogon and just fly away from Dragonstone forever, chasing the vibrant red and orange-burst trails of the setting sun to wherever they might lead.

Why not? Why stay here? Where she’s nothing more than an exiled pretender, a lost princess, a failed queen.

 _He’s a clever man, your Hand._ Lady Olenna had said this with a thin and wise smile. She then took care to warn Daenerys off his cleverness. And told her that she must ignore him if she wished to survive this place.

But she hadn’t. She couldn’t, too dependent upon Tyrion to navigate the intricacies of war in a western country she knew nothing about. But now Lady Olenna is dead. Perhaps Ellaria Sand and her daughter too. Yara Greyjoy has been captured and Theon is lost at sea. 

Daenerys’s allies have been picked off, one by one, and far too easily. And now, she’s all alone. Again. In an ancient castle that moans and groans under damp mist and cold sea winds, with nothing and no one to ward off the chill of a white winter that fast approaches.

And Daenerys hates the cold. She’s always hated the cold.

There’s a chalice on a nearby end table and with one quick swipe of her hand, she knocks it to the floor. The sound of pewter clattering against tiled stone does little to make her feel better. If anything, it makes her feel worse. She hates when she loses her temper like this. 

She hates that she’s suddenly tempted to fly straight to King’s Landing and burn Cersei’s highest towers to ash, damn all the consequences. 

_Moving carefully is the hard way, but it’s still the right way, Khaleesi_ …his voice cautions in reply, so gently.

Pain—hollow, suppressed pain—flickers over her features at the familiar sound of his voice in her head. Her eyes soften, her lips part. It’s habit and it’s hardly the first time. His voice travelled over the sea with her, whispering at her temple, passing over the curve of her ear, with the touch of a pale breeze stirring her silver-blonde hair. 

The pain settles into an ache, as the memory of his voice works its usual magic. She finds herself calming on the words he speaks, or spoke once upon a time. The fight leaves her immediately, drained out of her, the desire for vengeance softens and the breath in her lungs exhales slowly, as she closes her eyes briefly.

“Why are you so far away, Ser?” she whispers those words to the air, her voice begging an answer that she knows won’t come.

She considers. She waits, eyes closed and ears open. She imagines his presence. She can nearly pretend he’s in the room with her. Here, beside her. Reaching down and taking her hands. Oh, her hands miss his most decidedly. 

If she’s forced to name the one thing she misses most, it would be his hands.

Or the cadence of his raspy voice.

Or the way his blue eyes are always waiting to meet hers as she turns to her right side, as she looks up to find…

But he’s not here. He’s far from this place, searching for a cure to an incurable disease. Fighting off a death sentence that’s already been sealed and delivered. Attempting the impossible, again. For her. 

_Unless he’s already dead._

Her heart chills on the sudden idea, but her eyes snap open in sheer defiance.

 _No_. She thinks firmly, shaking her head. She would know if he was dead. She would _know_.

She’s not sure how that would be possible and she’s too afraid to linger on the thought for long, lest she realize that she’s feeding herself lies. The manic need to do something, _anything_ , returns, but this time it’s not borne of rage. It’s more desperation. 

Compulsion. Need.

She needs a pen and parchment. She goes searching for both, turning out the drawers of the nearest desk and then stretching up on tiptoes, to explore the higher shelves of the bookshelf beside it. A tiny jar of black ink is her prize and she nearly smiles when she finds it. 

Except she has little time to smile, sitting down with that ink, on a mission. She grabs the pen she finds discarded on the desk top, pulling a piece of parchment from the open drawer at her knee. She dips the pen twice, wiping the excess ink from the nib. She’s hunched over the paper to scribble out the words that her heart is suddenly screaming:

_I can’t do this without you. Please come back to me. Just come back to me._

_Jorah, please…_

A salty tear of frustration lands on the page, right on the curl of his name. And then one more. For she suddenly realizes that she doesn’t know where to send this letter. She doesn’t know where Jorah is, not even which side of the sea. 

_You are a foolish woman, Daenerys Stormborn. Were you going to slip it in a glass bottle and cast it out upon the waters?_ But she’s too filled with sorrow now to laugh at herself. 

Her pen hovers, as she wipes a third tear away with the back of her hand. She tells herself to stop being foolish. Minutes pass as she regains her control and poise.

She remembers herself at last, straightening up, sniffing once, but she can’t help but stare at the page beneath her hand and the lines written there. She thinks of throwing it out and would have…crumpling one corner in her fist before she thinks better of it. 

Impulsively, she stops, suddenly superstitious. She can’t stand the thought of those lines disappearing from view. She says them over and over again to herself, wondering if maybe he might hear them anyway, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing.

_Gods, let him come back to me._

Her anxious gaze drifts around her chambers, eventually returning to the bookshelf beside the desk. Her head tilts and her eyes narrow as they recognize one of her oldest possessions. The oldest, in fact. She had no others when Viserys sold her to Khal Drogo. 

Her eye is caught by the worn bindings of a worse-for-the-wear volume of songs and stories of the Seven Kingdoms, one of three books that she brought with her, all the way across the Narrow Sea.

One of three that she received from _his_ hands in Pentos. 

She sets her pen aside and folds her paper once, smoothing out the crumpled corner until it promises to lay flat. Her expression retreats back to placidness and stoic resolve, as befits the Silver Dragon Queen. 

Her tears are locked away and will remain so, until he returns to her and she can’t help but shed them freely, in the belly of a ship bound for King’s Landing, cheek pressed against his shoulder, grieving the loss of her child.

As she rises from her desk, she slips her letter between two pages of that book for safekeeping. 

“Please, Jorah…,” she whispers her last prayer _very_ softly, her fingers stroking the tattered binding from top to bottom, before she reluctantly drags them away.


End file.
